Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not wait for his afternoon meeting June 21 with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to hear what his European guest had to say and to express his reservations regarding the French peace initiative. At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting that morning, Netanyahu attacked the French “dictate.” He claimed that the initiative does not take Israel’s security needs into account and seeks to “push us into accepting indefensible borders while completely ignoring what will be on the other side of the border." He was referring to a proposed resolution that France wishes to submit to the UN Security Council (UNSC), based on recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and 18 months of negotiations between the sides over land swaps.

The prime minister strenuously objects to any mention of the 1967 borders and refuses to set a negotiating timetable. He also protests against the French threat that if the sides fail to reach agreement during the allotted time — including an agreed-upon solution to the Palestinian refugee problem and to the dispute over Jerusalem — France will initiate an international conference and announce its recognition of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu reiterates that he is ready and willing to return to negotiations “without preconditions,” especially without an overall freeze of construction in the settlements and in East Jerusalem during the negotiations, while emphasizing that there’s no chance of a two-state solution without Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

It stands to reason that Fabius did not expect a friendly welcome for his peace initiative. Back during the strategic dialogue discussions between Israel and France held at the beginning of May, Israel’s representatives spoke out harshly. They protested in the prime minister’s name against the new initiative France was promoting “behind Israel’s back” to move the diplomatic process from direct negotiations between the sides to an international format or to the UN.

Are we really facing a new anti-Israel European initiative — one that a Republican US president would have killed at its inception? The senior Israeli diplomats complained that France was inciting other European states to label settlement products and formulating other ideas to curb the occupation policy. Was France the one that invented the struggle against the settlements? No, they were phrased in American English and sent to the UNSC by the tenant of the White House at the time, Republican President George W. Bush. It happened 12 years ago, several months after the Quartet ratified the 2002 "Performance Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" and the Security Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the US resolution to formalize the road map into UN Resolution 1515.